Turn left at the screaming woman with a collapsing face. Turn right at the kneeling man with bleeding sores the size of teacups. If you come across a big-breasted bear with a child's head in her jaws, you're going the wrong way.

These instructions are written in gold letters, in elegant uncials. I can see the silhouettes of my fingers through the thin parchment paper.

Turn right at the woman sliced into twelve pieces. Please don't touch the statues. Please don't litter.

I weave my way through the hedge maze, dragging my faux- leather luggage trolley through the fresh-cut grass. After a while, I remove my Oxford pumps so I can feel the greenery between my toes. A mellow breeze cools my face. The air smells like lavender.

I pass a little girl with stone flames bursting from her eyes and mouth. She screams a silent scream, like all the others.

Finally, I reach the bottom of the parchment paper. The instructions say: Walk forward. They say: Please don't pick the flowers.

The path opens wide, and the hedges glare at me on either side, clipped into massive faces with wide open eyes and wide open mouths.

A little voice tells me to turn back, but a little voice always tells me to turn back.

I walk forward. I don't pick the flowers.

Before me, Stockton House scratches at the gray sky with two pyramid spires. Dozens of headless figures populate the yellowing, weatherworn facade. These sculpted figures reach to the heavens, their fingers curled. The wind picks up, dragging the heavy blanket of cloud across the firmament.

While double knotting the laces of my pumps, I spot a brown billfold crushing a patch of pale flowers. Inside the wallet there's a photograph of a small girl and a hundred-dollar bill. The girl looks a little like my son, with the big brown eyes and impish smile. A crown of lavender flowers sits askew on her dark curls. The girl reaches out for me, or for whoever took this photograph.

I approach two towering doors of black wood. An elongated woman balances on the trumeau. She's faceless, hairless. Her long, skeletal fingers press together in prayer.

A small section of the enormous door swings open, and an elderly woman bursts from the house. She's wearing a simple blue dress and a muslin apron embroidered with black feathers. Her tight gray hair pulls at the sagging skin of her face.

"Hello, miss," she says, taking hold of my luggage trolley. "Glad to see you found your way through the hedge. We had to send out a search party for the last one who came. Didn't know her left from her right, that one. I'll ask you, how can a teacher not know her left from her right? Mr. and Mrs. Evers will be glad to know you didn't have any trouble in the hedge."

The old woman turns around and disappears into Stockton House. I follow her through a brightly lit foyer with a red-and- white tessellated floor. Here and there, the tiles form geometric faces with wide open eyes and wide open mouths. For no good reason, I avoid stepping on these heads.

"You'll like it here," the old woman says. "Mr. Evers had eighty- four-inch, high-definition televisions installed in all the living quarters. I'll ask you, miss, have you ever seen your favorite program on an eighty-four-inch television? Mr. Evers is no skinflint when it comes to creature comforts. Safe to say you will like it here, miss."

The woman speeds forward as if she's walking on a moving sidewalk at the airport. I have to jog for a few seconds so that I don't lose her.

"My name's Antonia, but no one calls me that anymore, miss. My mother would call me Antonia if she were still alive, but she died from extrahepatic bile duct cancer twelve years ago. The name I go by is Robin. You might find this difficult to believe, but I can't remember who gave me the name or why. Robin's a pleasant enough name, so the history's of little consequence."

Robin leads me to a sitting room full of red velvet armchairs with carved mahogany frames. Most of the chairs face an eighty-four- inch, high-definition television mounted on the wall. A woman, probably Mrs. Evers, kneels in front of a marble fireplace. She's dressed in a chiffon evening gown with a ruched bodice. And she's using a bare hand to scoop dirt or ash into a brown paper bag.

"We had a little accident," Mr. Evers says, dressed in a gray checked suit with a wide lapel. He's standing next to the fireplace, grinning at the mound of ash on the floor.

"Let me do that for you, Mrs. Evers," Robin says, racing forward.

"No, no," Mrs. Evers says, waving away the old woman. "I'll do it. I don't think Grandfather would appreciate being swept into a dustpan." She continues scooping handful after handful of what must be her grandfather's ashes into the paper bag. On the mantle above Mrs. Evers's head rest a number of large white urns. Human faces protrude from the front of the urns, their eyes closed and their mouths downturned.

Mr. Evers approaches and takes my hand. He squeezes tight. "What did you think of the Atrocities?"

"Atrocities?" I say.

"The statues in the hedge maze. Job, Lot's wife, the Levite's concubine, etcetera, etcetera."

The back of my hand itches, but I don't move. "They're ... interesting."

"They're dreadful, aren't they?" Mrs. Evers says, standing. She holds her ash-coated hand as far away from the rest of her body as possible. "I would have ground the things into gravel years ago, except Hubert has a soft spot for tourists." Robin hands Mrs. Evers a towel the same color red as the armchairs surrounding us. "Once a year, we open the hedge to the public. People come from all over the world. It's really quite strange, the number of them willing to fly thousands of miles to see hideous statues."

Mr. Evers clears his throat. "What Mrs. Evers fails to grasp is that the Atrocities are more than mere grotesqueries. They exude historical and spiritual significance. Back when Stockton House was a church, the entire congregation would travel the maze together, hand in hand in hand. The parishioners would stop and reflect on every Atrocity. And what would they see? Not a hideous statue. They would look beyond the violence and suffering to the metaphysical core of the image. They would see a manifestation of God's power." Mr. Evers clears his throat again. "Forgive me for droning on. You must be exhausted after your flight."

"Oh," I say. I pull the wallet from my pocket. "I found this outside. There isn't any ID, so I'm not sure —"

"Didn't I tell you she would return it?" Mrs. Evers says, pulling the wallet from my hand. "Her references are more than impressive."

I let out a huff of air before I can stop myself. They purposefully left the wallet outside for me to find?

"You'll have to forgive the unorthodoxy of our little test." Mr. Evers sits on one of the velvet armchairs, and motions for me to do the same. "You see, Ms. Valdez, we require a governess with very specific qualifications. And this goes beyond a mastery of math and science and linguistics. As we mentioned in our letter, our daughter is having a difficult time coping with her present ... circumstances. She is, for lack of a better word, degenerating."

"Isabella's frightened,...